Does It Really Make You Happy?

Hello Beautiful Thinkers,

For whatever reason the jukebox in my head has decided that the song of the week is “If It Makes You Happy” by Sheryl Crow. The song itself does make me happy which is nice since I can’t get it out of my head. But the lyrics “If it makes you happy then why the hell are you so sad” definitely leave us with plenty to play with in our writing. This could be something that used to make the character happy but has lost its joy recently; why does your character still cling to it? Does she keep telling herself that it makes her happy because she is just used to saying so? Or maybe this is the sort of sad happiness that we like because it makes us glad just remember that we aren’t feeling that sadness all the time. Like when we watch a tragedy and think about how much better our life is than that. We’re sad but happy at the same time. Write a scene that plays with the idea of mixing happiness and sadness.